


i want to burrow like a sparrow

by sternenrotz



Category: The Horrors (Band)
Genre: Alternate Universe - Domestic, Alternate Universe - Vampire, Established Relationship, First Meetings, M/M, Slice of Life, Trans Male Character, neurodivergent character, sequel fic, somehow both of those at the same time
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2019-05-13
Updated: 2019-05-13
Packaged: 2020-03-02 15:17:54
Rating: General Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 5,549
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/18813553
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/sternenrotz/pseuds/sternenrotz
Summary: three moments from Josh's and Faris' relationship through the years.





	i want to burrow like a sparrow

**Author's Note:**

> titled after "Might Tell You Tonight" by Scissor Sisters.
> 
> set in 2016, 2013, 2022, sequel to the original Vampire fic ([X](https://archiveofourown.org/works/12467992/chapters/28376104))

The morning begins slowly.

Faris wishes he could get used to the sensation of tickly hairs in his face, or to the undercurrent of pheromones that wove through the last portion of his sleep, for that matter. He can't bring himself to open his eyes just yet, not when Josh's back to his chest heaves evenly with sleep. Beneath the fluffy duvet, the warm bubble of sleep still clings onto him, and he’s not willing to let go yet.

Friday, he used up one of his leave days to take the boat back to Oban before sunrise, then the earliest train to Edinburgh, a four and a half hour journey. Eighty-six fives. Josh picked out the AirBnB, a bright, spacious flat only a few streets from the shore, and he came to meet Faris at the station, too, with the smile on his face almost as bright as the summer sun. Faris would think it’s a cheesy simile, too, if the sun outside wasn’t shining onto his naked eyes and shoulders and heating up his skin right now.

Faris rubs his nose into the little indent where Josh's skull connects to his body underneath the hair, just before the nape where the pheromones originate. Next, his lips travel down lower to the top of Josh's spine and press a silent kiss there.

Playing like they're both asleep is his favourite part of their day together, the part before it starts. Like a hot water bottle or the stuffed animals from his childhood, Faris presses his face into Josh and wills himself to be lulled back to sleep by his familiar scent and warm, bare skin.

“You're awake.”

Faris is only startled for a split second. “ _You're_ awake,” he retorts. “You felt like you were asleep.”

Josh cackles.

Faris' chin hooks over Josh's shoulder to streamline his big spoon behind Josh's little spoon, and he pouts, the audible pout accompanied by a grunt to let Josh know what he's done. “You ruined it.”

“You ruined me,” Josh simply retorts. He shifts in Faris' embrace like a cat basking in sunlight and affection, and he makes a wordless noise of waking up. “Don't have to get up yet.”

Faris feels like he already spent hours waiting for Josh to stir and begin their day. “What time's it?”

“Early,” Josh insists. “We've got time.”

The sun seems to rise sooner up in Scotland than it did in London, the familiar red that tickled Faris' eyelids for as much of the morning as he can recall. He can't possibly guess how long it's been.

“Time,” Faris echoes before his lips and cheek find Josh's jaw. Even now, the prickles that mar his skin feel foreign, but he doesn't exactly mind. “Give me the time.”

Josh makes another noise, perhaps of protest, but he stretches for one of their phones left lying on the bedside to charge. “Eight,” he announces. “And a bit.”

Also on the bedside are Faris’ meds and his sunglasses, something he reminds himself of now so he won’t forget when he packs up his backpack.

“We’ve to check out by ten-thirty.”

“So we've got two hours.”

With a yawn, Josh settles back into his former position. When he twists, Faris moves along in sync, and the drowsiness of sleep settles around him once more, like the sunlight that paints his bare shoulders. His phone's alarm is set to nine o'clock.

*

“Excuse me?”

The amount of books on this shelf alone is overwhelming. Faris’ fingers shake around the spines of the two he is already holding when he tries to refocus his eyes. To think the entire shop surrounds him with more titles, more glossy hardbacks and soft paperbacks in all colours, Faris blinks five times, but his vision refuses to return to normal. At once, he’s all-too aware of that sweet forbidden-fruit feeling, the accompanying aftertaste of shame, but at the same time, he’s also taken back to being a kid before he knew how to read. He counts the spines in front of him, five, ten, fifteen… Focus. Focus, focus, focus, focus, it’s happening _again_.

“Sorry?”

The hand that same voice belongs to taps him on the shoulder now, and Faris pulls himself together enough to remember there’s other customers in the shop.

“Oh, sorry, am I in the way?”

“Yeah, let me just…”

The very first thing Faris sees when he turns around and lets the person past is _hair_. Like a mushroom cloud or a strange houseplant, he again has to readjust his eyes to a slightly lower level to find the person beneath. _Person_ is the best way to describe them, he realises just as soon, because he can’t pick out for sure if they’re a boy or a girl, or both, or neither. Without meaning to, he sucks in a breath.

Mushroom Cloud picks a book out of the shelf like they know exactly what they’re looking for and adds it to the little pile under their arm. Their fingers are knobbly with calluses, and Faris doesn’t know if he expected that.

Maybe he should say something else. “Sure. Of course.”

*

The click of a key in its lock scares Faris up from the curve of Josh’s cheekbone. His hand reflexively twitches around the fountain pen, but he catches himself before it can catch on the paper and ruin it.

At the front door of their little ground-floor flat, Josh rustles his grocery bags and sweet-talks down to Peppa, and Faris takes the few seconds to finish pulling the line down to its end. Very delicately, he breathes onto the textured paper to make sure the ink has sunk into the grooves, no wet shine to smudge remaining. Just in time, he shuts the black cover of the portfolio over the cold press pad, before Josh walks into the kitchen with Peppa toddling behind on her tiny paws.

“Evening,” Josh exhales, exasperation in his voice from being out in the cold and ruddy cheeks to match.

“Hey,” Faris says back.

The air was already crisp when he walked home from work a few hours earlier, but the first snowflakes began to fall outside only when the sun went down. When Josh leans down for a kiss hello, his lips are frozen, tiny ice crystals caught in his eyelashes and stuck to his hairline. The cold still clings to his coat before he unzips it, almost visible in the air like the opposite of heat flickers.

“Stopped by Tesco on my way back.”

Accompanied by Peppa’s incessant mewling, Josh drops two straining carrier bags onto the tabletop right next to Faris’ portfolio. Faris himself pulls a big variety pack of biscuits from one bag before he pushes his chair back.

“What d’you want to make for tea?”

“Something simple. Stir fry?”

Faris shrugs. “Sure.”

He opens a cabinet to put the biscuits inside, then the dry spaghetti and the bag of rice. Next, he places the stack of cat food tins on top of the fridge, and one to the side to stop Peppa yelling. Peppa’s a black-and-white rescue, mixed with some fluffy breed of fancy cat, so her tail stands up like a strange feather duster when she wraps herself around Faris’ leg.

“Josh, control your mop.”

Of course, it was Josh who insisted on adopting the cat, as a compromise for moving into a Glasgow flat rather than the Highland farm he originally wanted. Nevertheless, Faris leans down and scritches Peppa underneath her tiny chin when she ignores Josh’s gentle lip-click luring.

Apple juice, the yogurt with chocolate balls that Josh likes so much, houmous, milk, those all go in the fridge. Josh brought mushrooms for tea, chicken and broccoli and sweet yellow bell peppers. The stir fry they usually make is served over rice with a garlic sauce, and the very thought makes Faris’ mouth water as he stocks the fridge. His packed lunch at school wasn’t that long ago, but he only now realises how hungry drawing has made him.

“Were you marking the kids’ pictures from class when I came in?” Josh finally asks when he's stowing the bags-for-life away.

Faris picks the portfolio off the table.

“Just a personal project.”

Even though he's sure that the ink has dried, he very carefully turns the folder on its side to lean it against the wall. He’ll have to think of something else once he starts filling in the watercolours.

*

“What time’s your train?”

The question scares Faris up from his doze. Once again, he must have mistaken Josh’s still body for asleep.

“Half eleven.”

Faris couldn’t have possibly forgotten. The little things of train times and check-out-bys always stick about in the back of his brain like a ticking clock that counts down to when they’re no longer together.

“We’ll go to Starbucks or something for the hour. Somewhere that does breakfasts and coffee.”

Then, Josh goes back to London on the cross-country train, and Faris goes back to Colonsay. Ten-thirty is two-plus-six fives, but he’d rather not get into that. Much more, he’s intrigued by Josh’s tickly hair mingling with his, so much softer than he’s used to.

“You used to have more hair,” he points out.

“You’re implying I’m going _bald_?”

Faris could laugh at the nagging edge in Josh’s voice, but he decides to keep it contained in his mouth instead. His nose wants to find the back of Josh’s head again, where the hair is thickest, but at the same time he doesn’t want to lose the warmth that’s built up where their bodies align.

“You’ve probably got more hair than anyone I’ve ever met in my life. Like a dog.”

Josh doesn’t protest.

“Just used to be a lot more in my face.”

“So you’re saying I used to have bigger hair.”

The last time they saw each other, over Christmas, Josh’s hair was still unruly and tacky with hairspray. Half a year ago, Faris marvels at how long and how short a time period that is at the same time.

“Remember the first time we met? You had so much hair I didn’t realise there was a person in there at first.”

*

Mushroom Cloud smiles with more teeth than Faris would’ve expected when they turn back around. Their canines are pointy like a Vampire’s, but beneath the emo hair, their skin is much too pink. Faris gives them a quick once-over, black suit jacket studded with badges and enamel pins, band t-shirt and Converse trainers, and concludes they’re probably just a regular goth kid. Still no clue to whether they’re a boy or a girl or not, though, and their nasal, scratchy voice doesn’t help either.

“I’m Josh, by the way,” they say next.

Josh’s a boy’s name, probably. Although some people are called Jocelyn.

“I’m a boy.”

Josh points to a big white badge that reads _He, Him, His, pronouns, please!_

Faris immediately wonders how he could have missed that. His head still spins with overwhelm, but the new knowledge at least takes the edge off. “I’m Faris,” he finally says, unsure whether to extend his hand for a handshake. “Also a boy.”

Josh makes the cracking sound of a barely-suppressed cackle in his mouth. His hand is as rough and gnarled as it looks and just as warm, with a brief, firm squeeze.

With that cackle still stuck to his lips in form of a smirk, he says, “You look terrified.”

Faris can’t disagree that _terrified_ is an undercurrent in the cocktail of emotions he’s experiencing, so he doesn’t say anything. Dumbly, he realises once more how he must look from an outside perspective, eyes too big and hair tousled in a way that’s less _artful emo dishevelment_ and more _can’t be bothered_. The aftertaste from earlier has grown into full-blown shame pressing his tongue down now, and again, his eyes flit away from him and out of focus.

Focus – focus – focus – focus.

Faris blinks precisely five times, and Josh’s image sharpens again. To his utmost relief, Josh isn’t gawking at him.

“Are you gay?” he instead asks.

Faris doesn’t think he can detect any malice in his voice. Besides, he understood it that everyone in this shop is gay, at least to some extent.

“I guess so,” he answers.

The three words come out much smoother than he expected, considering how clogged his windpipe feels around them. Still, the rift between that and _normal human speech_ is big, an uncanny valley like the one his overstimulated automaton self belongs in. He also realises in that second that he just came out for the very first time, to an actual person as opposed to repeating _I’m gay_ in fives in his room or even inside his own soundless head.

“Cool,” Josh says with another pointy smile. He raises his fist to bump it against Faris’ shaky hand, and he says, “I’m pansexual. If you know what that means.”

“I think so.” Faris remembers that much from his aimless Google searches. “Cool.”

“Are you looking for anything specific?”

“Just looking around in general.” He says it easily, but his hand now feels clammy around the books he’s still holding.

Josh still gives him the same expression of understanding, much less distant than the calm eyes of a therapist. His red mouth looks ready to twitch into a smile.

“I think I’ve found everything I need now.”

“Same here.”

*

Peppa screams again from the floor, even when Faris knows she can’t possibly still be hungry. Nevertheless, he picks a cube of chicken from his plate and holds it to her little face, and she snatches it from his fingers. Content with her prey, she hunkers down on the floor with her tail swishing about, and Faris can return to telling Josh about his day.

“I’ve told you about the new boy at work,” he says.

Faris works as a primary school teacher now, English, Music, and Art, as part of the government’s programme for survivors of isolated Vampire communities, although he always thinks _survivors_ sounds too dramatic. The crumbling happened gradually after the referendum results, after the declaration of independence, but by the time someone blew the whistle on his enclave, the papers put the number of uncovered communes across Scotland at twenty-five, a perfect five-squared. Colonsay was among the last, though, with the people in charge found guilty of white-collar crimes, tax fraud and embezzlement and more fraud on top of that, as opposed to the cult tactics used by some of the groups in the Highlands.

Josh asks, “The refugee one?”

With the plate of stir fry in front of him and his hair down, Josh’s features look much softer than usual, albeit Faris supposes it could also be the conversation topic.

“Esmail, him.”

“Yeah.” Josh brings his fork to his face and nods once more while he chews.

Their kitchen has two lights, a bright overhead one ideal for working and a hanging pendant lamp. During tea, Faris always insists the big light be turned off so the red shade coats everything with a warm glow, and right now, it paints a gentle blush onto Josh’s cheeks as well. The sparkle in his eyes is all his, however, and Faris loves telling him about work for exactly that reason. Josh works in IT for some city-centre firm, and stories from his office are rare and always quickly told, whether it's a coworker’s stag party or someone's new high-tech gadget acquisition, or a code project Faris doesn’t begin to understand.

“Yeah, I was chatting to his mum this morning,” Faris says next. He deliberately picks at his plate to prick equal amounts of meat and all the vegetables onto his fork. “His mum’s Scottish, that is, he's adopted.”

Josh _ooh_ s.

“She seems like a nice woman.”

Faris chews his food and doesn’t know what to say next. His favourite kids to teach are always the ones who don’t fit in, the brown kids and council-house kids and Vee kids and the little girl with concentration issues, but this new boy has stuck with him in an insidious, itchy way, like bugs crawling inside his veins. He swallows, but his gullet pipe feels cast in lead as it goes down.

“It’s weird, but chatting to her, I really felt myself reminded of my own mum when I grew up.” Faris looks down at his plate instead of Josh’s face. “I know I wasn’t adopted, but…”

“It’s similar,” Josh says, “I feel.” He pushes a messy mixture of rice and veg onto his fork, and his brow furrows in thought. “Like, being adopted and being half-and-half, but obviously I’m not an expert.”

Faris exhales, everything he wanted to say in response now gone from his mind because Josh summarised it so succinctly. He smiles before he can help it, and he looks over at Josh’s mirrored smile, his eyes sparkly in the dim red. Next, he looks over to the portfolio still leaning on the wall and wonders how he could ever capture that glimmer in ink and paint, and his heart throbs up in his throat and down in his gut at once. He picks another forkful of everything up and lets the flavour coat his tongue, anything to weigh him down in contrast to that fluttery feeling, and to give him more time to think of what he should say next.

Josh watches him eat idly, a casual patience about him as he allows Faris to take his time. In turn, Faris can’t bring himself to look away. He looks at Josh’s gentle cheeks, the curve of his nose, still misshapen in its cartoonish ski-slope. Once again, Faris thinks of ink, delicately pulled curves to trace him and peachy watercolour to fill in his soft lips. The warmth beneath his ribs definitely isn’t from the food.

“I was wondering if we should adopt,” he finally says, and he immediately realises how heavily that statement hangs in the air. “Like, one day in the future. If we…”

“I’ve never thought about having kids,” Josh says. “I guess adopt, but…”

He pauses to pick at his stir fry now, a more deliberate motion much like Faris’ own, perhaps to buy himself more time, too. The realisation of the mirror almost makes Faris want to laugh, if that _but_ wasn’t hanging heavy in the air.

“I don’t know if we should.”

Faris says, “We’ve got time,” and he then cuts himself short at the realisation that Josh’s statement sounded a lot more _final_ than that.

“I don’t know if I’d be a good parent,” Josh says, and finally he breaks the eye contact to focus fully on the distraction in form of his food.

Faris doesn’t know what to say to that, but he feels he should. He says, “Josh.”

“I’m sure you would be… Like, of course you are, you’re good with kids.”

A few weeks ago, at Christmas, they took the train to Essex to see Josh’s family and his sister’s new baby. She got married the summer before the Colonsay enclave dissolved, but Josh was the man of honour at the wedding, so Faris used it as an excuse to take the week off and come visit. Still, as much as he likes Louise and her husband, a social worker from Ireland who she met during her internship, as much as he likes little Dermot, he now remembers Josh’s hesitation to hold his nephew and all the excuses he made to get away from their little house in Chelmsford. Faris’ throat tightens all over with that.

With his eyes still downcast, Josh’s dark eyelashes tremble against his cheeks, the canvas that’s now gone strange and papery.

“When we were visiting Louise last month, literally the only thing I could see looking at the kid was a pink, ugly worm. Like, I don’t think I’ve got parental instincts at all.”

“I’m not…” Faris hesitates to speak, alarmed by how defensive Josh has gotten. “We don’t have to have kids. Not if you don’t want to.”

“But you want to.”

It startles him when Josh turns his head upward to look straight at him with owlish eyes. Faris exhales and immediately feels light-headed, unsure whether or not to protest. One of the girls at school has two fathers who sometimes pick her up, and he hates how that’s the first thing that comes to his mind now. Inhale, hold, exhale, to the count of five each. Other than that, Faris can’t possibly think of anything to do.

“It’s so scary,” Josh says next. “I used to think about if… You know, if the worst case scenario ever happened.”

He refuses to put it in a less vague way, and Faris still understands exactly what he’s referring to. Very early, when he first started feeling that distinct parental twinge, he imagined if things had gone a little differently, whether they could have planned for their own biological children with a surrogate mother. The naked fear in Josh’s voice when he says _worst case scenario_ , however, makes him feel guilty for thinking about that even briefly.

Faris shakes his head.

“You imagine us making babies,” Josh says and plays with his food, but Faris wouldn’t be surprised if this conversation has made him lose his appetite. It certainly had that effect on him. “They’d be a genetic disaster.”

Inhale, hold, exhale. Faris looks down at his own plate once more, loaded with too much food than he could possibly eat at that moment.

He says, “That’s not funny.”

*

“The first time I saw you, the first few seconds, I thought you must be like, a wreck. Like a drug addict who stumbled into Rainbow Reads on accident.”

Faris says, “Hey.”

“It was the hair. And the twitching.” Josh laughs inside his own mouth, the sound of a smile. Faris doesn’t know if he should be insulted. “And the eyes.”

“The eyes,” Faris repeats. He nuzzles his cheek against Josh’s some more before he finally presses a kiss there, if only to soften the blow. “You’re mean.”

Josh cackles. His ribcage twitches in Faris’ embrace, and Faris has to put in an effort to remain stoic. Still, he finds it strange to feel Josh’s skin under his arms, a bare and smooth middle beneath a bare and smooth chest. He presses a second kiss to the bottom of Josh’s jawbone where the stubble is most prominent in an attempt to shush him.

“You once said to me that the first time you met me, you were wondering how someone could wear that much makeup and not get beaten up, so.” Josh stretches beneath the sheets until Faris can hear something in his spine pop. “I think we’re even.”

“It was true, so.” Faris realigns their bodies, and he adds, “The first time I met you, I thought you were the most ludicrous, larger than life, true-to-yourself person I’d ever seen, and it really scared me.”

Once more, Josh laughs, a content, closed-mouthed laugh that only barely escapes his lips. “Aww,” he says, and he nestles himself deeper into Faris’ chest against his back. “What do you think of me now?”

*

Josh, it turns out, smokes rollies he keeps in a coffin-shaped cigarette case. He may be the most ridiculous person Faris has ever met and, at the same time, the amalgamation of every internet emo kid he idolised as a teenager. The rain from earlier has slowed down, and still, Faris is grateful for the bookshop awning keeping them dry.

“Do you smoke?”

“Not regularly, but…”

Faris isn’t about to say that he only craves it when he’s nervous, even if he already admitted much more personal things in the last five minutes. The lighter Josh hands him now is an offensively bright shade of pink.

“Cheers.”

“So, let me guess,” Josh starts. The nails of the fingers he’s using to hold his fag are painted black. “Did you just come out?”

“I guess.”

Faris’ face feels too warm when he exhales a puff of smoke, despite the typical dreary September weather around them. Only after a second does it occur to him that his face must be bloodshot, but at least Josh is unlikely to notice that.

“I haven’t really had the _I’m gay_ conversation with anyone, you’re the first…”

“That’s cool,” Josh says once again. “Like, I just came out again, ‘cause I’m trans, so I’m having the conversation with everyone right now, but you don’t have to… You can just say to yourself that you’re gay for now, you know?”

Faris shrugs. He supposes he understands. “Yeah.”

“D’you live round here?”

“Near Homerton, ‘cause I live in halls.” He immediately questions whether that addition was at all relevant or necessary.

The longer he looks at Josh, the stranger his face becomes, his nose too wide not only at its end but also at the root, with dimples in his cheeks that seem just slightly misplaced. Even the mass amount of eyeliner he’s wearing does little to make his green frog-eyes look smaller, not to mention that he’s generally wearing an obscene amount of makeup. Faris is not so much confused as he’s intrigued.

“So you came here all the way just to buy books?”

“I had an appointment for a blood test,” Faris says, and like a reminder, the plaster in the crook of his elbow itches as he brings the fag back to his mouth. “I thought I might as well stop by and get some books, to get used to it or something.” He also immediately realises how daft he made himself sound by phrasing it like that.

Josh laughs, a high-pitched, cartoonish cackle. “No, that’s cool,” he insists. “I live in Hackney, too, so we’re close to each other.”

Faris doesn’t know what to say to that, and that thought scares him a lot more than he ever thought it would. “I’m sorry for being like that when we were inside, by the way,” he says. “And also in general, just to warn you.”

“What d’you mean?”

Maybe that wasn’t the ideal way to keep the conversation going. Faris says, “Brain problems,” in an effort to keep it vague, and he waves a hand in front of his face to illustrate.

Josh says, “Fair enough,” as if he isn’t at all bothered by that statement, or even eager to ask questions. “Nothing wrong with that.”

*

They finished their tea quietly and then washed up together. Even through their casual conversation, Faris couldn’t shake the nagging idea that Josh was cross with him, perhaps rightfully so. The unspoken rule between them has long been that they’d never ask that question, but it refused to let him go.

At eight, they settled on their respective ends of the couch to watch Midsomer Murders together, but Josh excused himself after half an hour to go play video games in his office instead. Josh’s office is located in the second bedroom of the flat, but really, he only calls it that because _man cave_ sounds too much like a sex thing.

For a while, Faris remained in his spot, but he soon found his mind slipping into pockets of nothing. The investigation on screen stopped making sense, and so he dug out a pile of English assignments from the kids to mark instead.

Now, he’s the first to crawl into the empty bed, exhausted from correcting pages and pages of childish handwriting, and yet he’s got a buzz in his belly that makes it impossible for him to rest. The bedroom door remains open for Peppa to hush through, although she was curled up on the armchair the last Faris saw her. When they first adopted the cat, he insisted that they keep her away from the upholstery and especially the mattress, but by now, Josh already spoiled her rotten and if they do shut the door, Peppa’s claws on the wood usually scare them up at night. Right now, Faris wouldn’t even mind the hair on the mattress in exchange for her soft fur and the gentle rhythm of her purring.

Although he turned the light in the hall off to sleep better, the tapping of Josh’s fingers on the keyboard creeps inside to haunt him like an earworm. Faris curls into a ball beneath the duvet and wills to fall asleep, but Josh’s words from earlier stick in his brain in the same matter. For lack of a better way to express it, he feels like a dickhead.

His eyes remain focussed on the empty half of the mattress illuminated by the doorway. Despite the massive stir fry, Faris’ insides feel desolate, sucked dry by the overhanging worry. He never realised dread could be that exhausting, and to think there’s no physical distance between him and Josh only makes the weight of those few hours grow heavier.

The next time Faris opens his eyes, the room is dark and quiet, and Josh is crawling onto his half of the mattress.

“Hey.”

“Sorry,” Josh whispers. “Didn’t want to wake you.”

“I’m sorry,” Faris says back. He couldn’t have possibly slept for long, but his voice has turned into an impossible creak. His hand finds the mattress between them. “Josh.”

Josh nods. “I meant me too when I said a kid between us would be a genetic disaster, just so you know.”

Faris doesn’t know whether to laugh at that. His eyes acclimate easily to the dark around them, and he looks over at Josh with half his face hidden in the pillow.

“I did think about it briefly, when I had my consultation before surgery,” Josh says next. “About keeping some of my eggs, if it weren’t so expensive, and if… I don’t know if it’s good for me to pass on my genes, obviously. Imagine a whole line of children with no parental instincts and deformed faces.”

His face turns into a fragile smile, a mask to hide all the emotion that nevertheless dried his voice up. Faris inhales, holds and exhales to keep that realisation from tightening his chest up even more.

“I don’t think my ma had parental instincts, either. It must run in the family.”

“Josh,” Faris finally says. “Your face isn’t _deformed_.”

In the greyscale dark of their bedroom, Josh’s face is outlined and contoured by soft shadows, a barely-perceptible shine in his eyes that wasn’t there before. The fake smile won’t leave his lips, either, and Faris looks at his ridiculous little teeth, his big nose and the downturned corners of his eyes. He’s perfect.

“Like I was gonna say,” he continues. “I’m sorry if I pressured you into it. Or if I made you feel that way.”

Josh shakes his head, and his hand finds Faris’ on the mattress as the only point of contact between them. “It’s just saying how you felt,” he says. “And it’s just how we’re very different.”

The wording is vague enough for him to mean anything, but Faris’ focus again draws itself to the contrast between their hands. He could laugh about Josh’s ability to wrap everything in a simple sentence once more, but the knowledge how fake it would be easily creeps up on him.

Instead, he simply says, “We are.”

“And there’s already too many children in the world for us to make more,” Josh says. “I wonder if it’s like… something you grow into.”

Most of the parents Faris meets at school are approaching forty, and Josh just turned thirty-one. He does the maths, and he’s not sure if Josh’s theory works out.

“Let’s agree if you do,” Faris says. “That we never talk about having kids again until that point when you want to. Cool?”

Josh’s smile softens and widens, and he says, “Cool.”

Faris is thinking like an artist again. He imagines Josh’s face traced by tender charcoal, in black-and-white rather than the pastels he had imagined. Maybe, if he puts in lots of work over the next few days, he’ll be able to do a second one…

“What are you thinking about?”

Faris stumbles over himself. “It’s our anniversary soon,” he says.

One of them, anyway. But he always figured the first time they had sex, the weekend after Valentine's Day, was one of the more easy-to-remember ones.

“Is it?” Josh asks. “I thought it was in September. Of when we first met?”

Before Faris can think about that, they both burst into quiet laughter.

*

Faris finally allows himself to open his eyes. The room is pleasantly cool, no ache in his eyes, but the drawn blinds still paint stripes of light over the bed and onto their bodies.

“I think,” he says, and his face finds the side of Josh’s neck again. “I think you’re my gorgeous boyfriend who I never get to see, and right now we’ve still got about two hours in this bed.”

Josh hums. His skin has the beginning of a crisp tan, from when they went to Portobello Beach yesterday, an even brown all over his torso to conceal the battle scars.

“I think you’re the opposite of a wreck, for what it’s worth.”

Finally, he twists around in the sheets for them to be face-to-face, and he leans up for a real kiss.

They’ve got time.


End file.
